A meta MIB may be implemented in an agent, which enables a network management station (NMS) to specify various information elements of interest in potentially multiple MIBs. The NMS may further specify the specific instances (rows) of interest in the information elements. The information of interest may then be retrieved using potentially a single get command. The received information may further contain a sparse index indicating the invalid entries in the received data such than an NMS can easily parse the received data.